A Truly International Dividing Line

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Webcasting around the world from the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona, this is the Dividing Line.

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The Apostle Peter commanded Christians to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us, yet to give that answer with gentleness and reverence.

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Our host is Dr. James White, director of Alpha Omega Ministries and an elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church.

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This is a live program and we invite your participation. If you'd like to talk with Dr. White, call now at 602 -973 -4602 or toll free across the

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United States. It's 1 -877 -753 -3341. And now with today's topic, here is

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James White. And good morning. Welcome to the Dividing Line. The second, no, second, no, first of June.

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I was going, that's just been up so long, it feels like the second of June already. 31st of June, 2010.

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May is finally over with. That's a 31 -day month and I got a lot done during it.

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The price debate seems like it was quite some time ago, but that's because we've been busy, busy, busy, and I have a million things to get to today.

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One of the disadvantages of doing the program only on Tuesdays and Thursdays, if something happens like Thursday afternoon,

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Friday, you don't get to comment on it for quite some time. Well, something did happen last week and a number of people pointed me to it and I thought it would be well worth taking the time to take a listen to this.

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I don't think I've ever played him on the program before, but we're going to listen to a very insightful clip from Mr.

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Glenn Beck. Yes, Glenn Beck, the Fox News commentator, who is a convert to Mormonism, as I understand.

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I'm sorry? I think he married into, or married into, well, he's still converted. He believes in Nephites and Lamanites and all those people here in the

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United States. And so sometimes he comes up with some really interesting comments, and this time,

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I guess this is from his radio show from last week.

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And we get what happens when you think Dan Brown's not writing fiction here, okay, in essence.

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Get a little conspiracy theory action going on. But this is a clip from the

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Glenn Beck show on radio about the single most mythologically expanded event in Christian church history called the

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Council of Nicaea. If you don't know when else it happened, blame it on the

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Council of Nicaea. That seems to be the operative mechanism that people have come up with.

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It truly is amazing. I have heard so many amazing things attributed to the

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Council of Nicaea. Remember, you can't get the original video anymore because Abdullah Al -Andalusi pulled it down, but Abdullah and the guys over in London produced this video about how allegedly the books of the

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New Testament were chosen, especially the Gospels. And they talked about eyewitnesses that were actually from like 800 years later and stuff like that.

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It was quite humorous, but how they locked all the candidates of the Gospels, all the different Gospels, into a room the next morning, only the four canonical

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Gospels were left on the table and all this really, really loony stuff. Well, again, if you want to blame something on Christianity, blame it on the

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Council of Nicaea. That's what Glenn Beck does here. But again, in the process, he ends up engaging in tremendous anachronism.

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And I think you all will recognize it. Let's listen to Glenn Beck from his radio program talking about the

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Council of Nicaea and the Dead Sea Scrolls. I tell you, we almost need to put together a time capsule.

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I was talking about this yesterday with David Bartner the day before. But we need to put a time capsule almost together in our children.

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We need to teach them the eternal truths, and we also need to teach them the divine truths of our founding documents and plant them deep inside of them so they can never ever be rooted out.

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Because they may be the vessel that carries those. You know, the

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Dead Sea Scrolls, do you know what they are? Stu, do you know what the

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Dead Sea Scrolls are? Well, of course I do. No, come on. Most people don't. I've heard of them.

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I don't really know. You don't really know. You have no idea why they were there. Sarah Averageperson doesn't know.

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Any idea? Take a guess at why the Dead Sea Scrolls are there or anything else. Something religious.

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Okay, good. Even though I've explained this program a couple of times, I'm glad to see that even the people that work with me every day don't even listen.

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Well, we were actually talking about American Idol last night. The guy won. It was unbelievable. So here's what happened.

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When Constantine decided he was going to cobble together an army, he did the

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Council of Nicaea, and what they did is they brought all of the religious figures together, all the

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Christians, and then they said, okay, let's put together the Apostles' Creed, and you guys do it.

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So they brought all the religious scripture together, and that's when the Bible was first bound and everything else, and then they said, anybody that disagrees with this is a heretic, and off with their head.

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Well, that's what the Dead Sea Scrolls are. The Dead Sea Scrolls are those scriptures that people had at the time that they said they are destroying all of this truth.

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Whether it's truth or not is up to the individual, but at that time, those people thought that this was something that needed to be preserved, and so they rolled up the scrolls and they put them in clay pots, and they put them in the back of caves where no one could find them.

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They were hidden scripture because everything was being destroyed that disagreed with the

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Council of Nicaea and Constantine. That's what those things are.

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Our children must become our clay pots. Our children must be taught the things that we know to be true, those things that we know to be self -evident, that all men are created equal and endowed by their

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Creator with certain unalienable rights, among them life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

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Those things must be put into our clay pot, our children. They must also be put into us.

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But for those things to not disintegrate, we must be a clean vessel.

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We must be a clay pot that does not have something inside of it that is rotting.

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That seemed like the only appropriate sound file I could play after that. Oh my gosh!

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You're kidding me! No! You hadn't heard that? You've got to be kidding me. I've never heard that before. Anything like it. It was just last week.

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Is it possible the U .S. Constitution was in there as well? I'll bet you Constantine wrote all that up.

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Well, remember, he's a Mormon, so he thinks the Constitution's inspired. Yes, he's right. That did come out at one point.

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Most people are not aware of that. But obviously, I want to go back and walk through this.

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But I have a feeling, and Turrett and Fanon Channels came to the same conclusion

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I did just now, I think what he's doing is he's confusing the

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Dead Sea Scrolls and the Nag Hammadi Library. There are people who theorize, can't prove this, but there are people who theorize that long after the

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Council of Nicaea, especially around the time that Athanasius wrote his 39th

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Festal Letter with the canon list in it, that the reason that the various Gnostic texts found at Nag Hammadi were hidden away at that time was because of some official book -burning jihad going on.

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And I have a feeling he's probably heard that one someplace, which, again, is totally theoretical.

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You know, just sort of go, well, you know, there might have been this or might have been that. You put that together. But the Dead Sea Scrolls, just for Glenn Beck's edification, the

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Dead Sea Scrolls predate Christ. And they come from the century before Christ.

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So the Council of Nicaea is 325 AD. So we're about 400 years off there,

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Glenn. The Dead Sea Scrolls are 400 years earlier, at least. I mean, there's older ones amongst the

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Qumran caves, but they're at least 400 years prior to the Council of Nicaea and anything like that.

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But I told you, if you want to blame something on somebody, blame it on the

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Council of Nicaea. Let me back this up a second. I'm playing this on something that's really not all that easy to back up on.

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But I wanted to go through just a couple of points here that he made. Nicaea, right? Yeah, Council of Nicaea.

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And what they did is they brought all of the relics. Actually, I need to back up just a little bit before that because he was talking about why it happened.

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Yeah, Council of Nicaea. And they wanted to cobble together an army.

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Okay, so he wants to cobble together an army. Now, remember, this is

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Constantine who, in 312, he takes

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Rome. He has an army. He's not wanting to cobble together an army. He already has an army. He has united the two halves of the

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Roman Empire. So he already has an army. So he's not trying to cobble anything together. There's evidence that he was concerned about the unity of the empire as a whole.

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And by 325, 12 years after the Age of Milan, which made Christianity, you know, stopped the persecution against Christianity, he saw that as a hopeful means of helping to hold the

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Roman Empire together was to have a united Christendom. That's very important. But he wasn't trying to cobble together an army in any way, shape, or form.

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He did the Council of Nicaea, right, Pat? Yeah, Council of Nicaea.

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And what they did is they brought all of the religious figures together. No, at most 318 bishops, and primarily from the east.

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The west was not overly well represented at the Council of Nicaea. And it was only

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Christian bishops, not all religious leaders, because there would have been all sorts of other religions represented in the

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Roman Empire at that time as well. So not quite accurate. All the Christians, and then they said, okay, let's put together the

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Apostles' Creed. No, the Apostles' Creed comes before the

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Nicene Creed and not after the Nicene Creed. You know, you guys do it.

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So they brought all the religious scripture together, and that's when the Bible was first bound. No, that's not when the

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Bible was first bound. I'm not sure what you mean by bound. I mean if Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus both come from the time of the

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Council of Nicaea, then you might say that you have your first full

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Codex manuscripts that date from that time, where there were those that existed before that.

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We don't know, certainly given the Roman persecution. There may have been that were destroyed.

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We just don't know. But I have a feeling, again, given that Mr. Beck is a Mormon, that he might have in the back of his mind there the idea of the choosing of the canon, things like that, which, again, had absolutely nothing to do with the

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Council of Nicaea. Everything else. And then they said anybody that disagrees with this is a heretic and off with their head.

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No, out of their bishopric, not off with their head.

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No one was executed. The very few bishops that would not sign were deposed, but they were not executed.

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So it was not off with their head. Well, that's what the Dead Sea Scrolls are.

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No, because the Dead Sea Scrolls had been buried in the Judean hillside about 400 years before this.

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Actually, like, again, I really think what he's thinking of here or has heard about, but obviously hasn't read any firsthand information on, are the

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Nag Hammadi texts, the Gnostic texts that were discovered in Nag Hammadi contemporaneously, discovery -wise, within a decade of the

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Dead Sea Scrolls. And so it's just a bunch of old stuff found in the desert.

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So Dead Sea Scrolls, Nag Hammadi, Oxyrhynchus, whatever, just sort of squish them all together and make some kind of odd, interesting commentary from that.

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But I wanted to play Glenn Beck's interesting recital of history.

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I must confess it does cause one to go, you know, not really certain that he's the best source to go to for historical information, really on any subject at all, because that was pretty bad.

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877 -753 -3341, 877 -753 -3341,

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Skype is dividing .line, which we want to go to right now and talk with Manuel all the way over in France.

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Hello, Manuel. Hi, Dr. White. How are you? I'm doing well. How are you? Fine, thanks.

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What can we do for you? So, yeah, the thing is that I finished watching the nine -hour conference on the tulip by John Piper, and it was pretty clear for me everything is good.

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I think that I can explain and defend the five points, except for the P, which

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I just can't get it. He gave the example of a woman that came to see him, and she said,

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I am having a relationship with another guy. And Piper goes, if you don't stop, you're going to be damned.

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And then, you know, so it's like you stop your sin, but at the same time you're secure. And so I don't know if you can help me out with that.

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Well, a couple of things. First of all, I don't know what nine -hour presentation you're referring to.

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I've not seen this, so I can't comment on any contextual issues with what it was that John Piper was saying.

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I've said many times that when we talk about the preservation and perseverance of the saints, we are not talking about the once saved, always saved, you have your ticket punched, you're going to heaven concept that is very common amongst anti -lordship individuals who do not see that salvation is a work of God to his glory that has a purpose.

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But the preservation of the saints flows directly from the preceding four points of Reformed theology, and I would argue biblical theology.

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That is, if it has been from eternity past the decree of the sovereign

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God to save a particular people, and if they are incapable of saving themselves due to their deadness and sin, and if the atonement of Christ is perfect in its provision of forgiveness, and if God by his powerful and irresistible grace at his point in time draws us to faith and repentance, faith in Christ, repentance toward God through regeneration, then clearly if God is going to be glorified in all of what has come before, then all of that self -glorifying action cannot be destroyed by the activities of the individual, as if somehow, though he was non -sovereign up to this point, he becomes sovereign so that he can undo the work of God.

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Now, what sounds like might be causing your confusion in light of the example that you just gave,

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I would respond to someone who says that I'm engaged in an adulterous relationship.

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I would say, do you experience guilt? Are you seeking repentance and restoration?

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And if they are not, then I would say you will be damned because they've never been saved in the first place.

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The whole point of 1 John 2 is to say that the apostate goes out from the fellowship of the church, refuses to obey the commands of Christ, and to believe the truth of Christ, so that it might be demonstrated they were not truly of us.

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If they had been truly of us, they would have remained with us, but they went out from us to demonstrate they were not truly of us.

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And so I don't believe that John Piper was saying this was a true believer who has experienced regeneration, and yet they could yet be damned.

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I think his point was that people can profess very loudly their faith in Christ, but the distinguishing factor of saving faith is that it endures.

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Jesus said, he who endures to the end shall be saved. Now, the man -centered person reads those words and goes, see, it is my enduring to the end that saves me.

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It becomes a prescription. This is how you become saved. But the person who recognizes that the gospel is a

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God -centered act and reads the Bible in a God -centered way, reads those words and finds a description of saving faith.

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He who endures to the end will be saved. True saving faith endures. That's the mark of true saving faith is it's not an on -again, off -again type of a situation.

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And the reason for that is that God is glorifying himself in a particular people in Christ Jesus, and he is glorified by the conforming of their lives to the image of Jesus Christ.

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And so the whole concept of the perseverance of the saints simply flows very naturally from the first four points and is just the conclusion of the acceptance of all of those things.

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So with that in mind, what causes you the most problem there, having heard the rest of the presentation?

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No, it makes sense how you explain it. It makes sense. It's just the way that he put it or the example that he gave, it was more like if the woman, like if it depended on the woman to stop it.

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Well, I think, again, anytime someone gives that kind of an illustration, I think what they're trying to demonstrate, what they're trying to address, is to warn against the abuse of this doctrine because it is greatly abused.

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There are a few things that you can do to someone that will more possibly guarantee they're being shut down to the gospel than to give them false religious hope.

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And I cannot tell you how many times as one involved in the gospel ministry for quite some time now, you encounter people – well, for example,

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I was a hospital chaplain, and so I encountered this a number of times in that context. You'll encounter a parent.

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They have a child that was raised in a quote -unquote

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Christian home of some kind and at some young age, walked down an aisle, filled out a card, prayed with somebody in Sunday school, whatever it might be, all ways that God has used to draw people to himself.

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I'm not questioning that for a second. However, the teenage years hit.

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They forget about all that. Since that time, in fact, for the past 30 years, they have never shown a single sign of spiritual life.

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They have no concern about godliness. They have no concern about the Word of God. They have no love for the

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Christian people. They are living a life of dissolution and drunkenness and sexual perversion or whatever else it might be.

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And yet, that parent, that mother, that father will talk to me and will say,

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Well, you know, we know he's saved.

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We know he's going to heaven because he prayed that prayer back when he was seven years old.

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And that is the kind of dangerous perversion of the truth of the perseverance of the saints that I think he's attempting to warn about with those particular words.

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That's one of the worst things you can do to somebody is to tell them, Yep, you know what? The Bible says you got your ticket punched.

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You're on your way to heaven. And that's it.

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So, I think that's what he was trying to warn against. And it is very important to warn against those things.

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But the fact of the matter is, perseverance flows from the purpose of God and the salvation of God's elect people.

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And it is just simply a recognition that the kind of saving faith that is granted to us in regeneration is a saving faith that will persevere to the glory of Christ.

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And that's the only reason you and I continue in the faith is because of the fact that God's grace is what sustains us.

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It is not because of any addition we have made in any way, shape, or form. All right.

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Thank you very much. All righty. Well, thanks for staying up. What time is it in France right now? It's 8 .24.

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Well, that's not too bad. Yeah, that's all right. By the way, the presentation is right on his website.

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And the Desiring God is called Tulip. And it's a DVD with a study guide. So, if you want to check it out, I mean, it's pretty good,

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I think. So, thank you very much. Okay. Thank you very much for calling.

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God bless. Bye -bye. 877 -753 -3341 or Skype at dividing .line,

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which is how Manuel from France. Isn't it amazing? Sounded like he was right here in the studio with us.

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The quality of Skype has skyrocketed from the time when it first started.

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It sounded mainly like this. Now it doesn't. So, I have no earthly idea what this call is about, which is what

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I've been asking about. And no one has answered. But let's talk with Magnus in Sweden. Hello, Magnus.

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Good evening. Hi. How are you? Hi. Well, I've got a really short question.

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I've been reading a book called The Meaning of Jesus, Two Visions. I don't know if you…

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Who's the author? Markus J. Borg. And he writes, it's a kind of a debate book.

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Well, I'm kind of puzzled about the view of Markus J. Borg. He calls himself a

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Christian. And still he denies the historicity of the virgin birth and so on.

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Well, he denies the historicity of the vast majority of the Jesus story. Markus Borg is a member of the

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Jesus Seminar. And so, I don't know that we have it available yet.

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I hope we do. But we're supposed to have it available on the website somewhere.

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The debate that took place in 2005 between myself, on the

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Christian side, was myself and Dr. James Renahan of the Institute of Reformed Baptist Studies versus John Dominic Crossan and Markus Borg on the historicity of the resurrection.

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You need to understand that Markus Borg does not believe that the resurrection had anything to do with a corpse coming alive.

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It is all a spiritual thing. It doesn't have anything to do with Jesus actually rising from the dead.

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And so, you just need to understand that Markus Borg is coming from an exceptionally liberal perspective at that point and not coming from the perspective of believing that the

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Bible is divine revelation in the sense of actually being historically true and things like that.

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So, hopefully that will help you in reading what he's stating that he's really coming from a very, very liberal perspective.

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Well, when I read this book, I kind of got the picture that he wants to believe that the

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Bible is inspired in some sense by making metaphors being the word of God.

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Right. Do you understand what I mean? Oh, yes, I do. Yeah. Because he says he believes not in the bodily resurrection, but that Jesus actually lives in some sense in heaven with God.

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Right. He is God. Right. In a metaphorical sense. It's kind of puzzling. In some sense.

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Yeah, there are even some differences between he and Crossan on that point. There's almost a

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New Age spirituality about Borg's writings that separates him even from John Dominic Crossan and other members of the

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Jesus Seminar. But when it comes down to the reality of the apostolic proclamation of what the very nature of resurrection is, and that is that which died coming to life again,

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I remember in the midst of that debate, and is that debate up or are we still? No, the debate's not up yet.

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We need to get that up. Certainly the audio should be available.

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No, the audio's not available yet. Okay. Well, someday it'll be up. Hopefully within five years when it took place, which will be the end of this year.

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So we'll get it up before the five -year anniversary there. But at one point, Dr. Renahan and I were really pressing the meaning of the text about what resurrection is.

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And finally, Dr. Borg said, well, if you really believe that Jesus actually literally came out of the tomb, then you must think our viewpoint is really wrong.

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And it was like, yay, victory! We got our point across, yay! It only took us about an hour to do it, but we managed to get our point across there.

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Yeah, I mean, that's how far apart we were on those particular issues.

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But yes, you're reading him correctly. You just need to recognize that you're reading someone coming from...

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When he talks about the inspiration of the scripture, he talks about how it is inspiring, not the idea that it is objective revelation that is in and of itself objectively true.

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There's a huge difference between the two. Well, a related question is sometimes people say something like, you know,

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I don't believe that Jesus was born of a virgin, but I believe that God was in him in a unique way and saved the world, and I still believe in his resurrection and so forth.

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Is it possible to call oneself Christian and have that kind of view?

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Only if you believe that Christian is not defined by God's revelation. If you embrace the idea that Christian can be defined by social standards rather than by the revelation of what the apostles themselves taught, then you can call all sorts of things

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Christian. But if you believe that a Christian is one who actually believes and follows the teachings of Jesus Christ as found in scripture, then no, you certainly cannot identify that as a

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Christian perspective at all. And though there are many people in our society that want to do that, they want to force us to compromise at that point, we simply can't do that.

30:48

Well, a conservative person like N .T. Wright says that, you know, that the virgin birth question is not a big issue, and it's not a…

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I don't know if he says that, but it's implied that it's not a question of salvation.

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Yeah, well… If you don't believe in the virgin birth, but you believe in his death and resurrection… Magnus, many of us would not identify

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N .T. Wright as a conservative in any way, shape, or form. As I've said many times,

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N .T. Wright giveth and N .T. Wright taketh away. Blessed be the name of N .T. Wright. Every time that he says something that sounds conservative,

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I was listening to a debate, and again, it was with Marcus Borg, interestingly enough. But I was listening to a debate that he did with him, and at one point he was criticizing

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Borg for the use of the Q materials, and saying, well, you know, we don't know, we've never found

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Q, we don't know that Q existed, we don't know the order in which the Gospels were written. And that sounds very conservative.

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He's right about that, and that's wonderful. And within five minutes, he turns around and says that Lazarus was not resurrected from the dead, that he really hadn't died, because that goes against his view of what resurrection is.

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And even Marcus Borg was like, but Lord, he stinketh. I mean, even Marcus Borg can see the obvious fact of this particular situation.

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So you have to be careful. I mean, Wright sometimes will say some very insightful things.

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He has a commentary on 1 Corinthians 8 that Richard Balcom quotes in his work on the crucified

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God, which is extremely insightful, but you just have to read him with massive discernment filters on, because you can glean jewels, but you have to dig through a lot of stuff that ain't jewels at all to get to it.

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So keep that in mind in looking at anything by N .T. Wright as well, okay?

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Yes. Okay, well, thank you, Magnus. What time is it in Sweden? It's 2032.

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Okay, all right. Same as France. Thank you very much. All right, thank you very much for calling. God bless. Bye -bye. All right, two

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Skype calls at dividing .line, and they sound great. And so, actually, is

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Stephen a Skype call as well? No? Then what are you putting three up out there? What?

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I'm sorry? He said we had three Skype calls. Oh, okay, all right.

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Well, I haven't seen that yet, so I wouldn't know about that. Let's talk to Stephen in Canada.

33:34

Hi, Stephen. Hi, Dr. Wright. How are you today? This is a very international edition of the Dividing Line. I was going to download

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Skype, but I figured it would take too long, and I want to get on the action here. So I figured I've got to represent Canada here while we're at it, right?

33:47

All right. And did some of my comments about Glenn Beck get you going?

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I didn't get a chance to listen to that. You've made some comments in the past about that. I heard your podcast responding to William Lyon Craig on Mormonism.

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Oh, yes, uh -huh. And I've listened to his comments. I've actually been discussing with somebody who works at Biola about his remarks, and he's defending

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William Lyon Craig's position, and he's offered to forward any questions his way.

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So I might ask him if he's ever read the book by James Tallage on the Articles of Faith or something like that.

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Right, right. I doubt it, but anyway. Well, yeah, I don't get that. Well, I don't know. He might.

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William Lyon Craig's a bright guy, but I just don't— one of my problems with what could be described as ivory tower scholasticism is that it's one thing to interact with professors from BYU.

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It's another thing to have spent decades talking to Mormons of every stripe and every level of education so that you can draw from literally thousands of conversations and thousands of snapshots of what it is that the

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Mormon Church teaches, not just at BYU and from people who are really attempting to spin things.

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Because, as I pointed out in Is the Mormon My Brother, in responding—

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Yeah, well, think about just that one doctrine of the physical parentage of Jesus Christ.

35:22

I mean, I think I sort of demonstrated that that's what the leadership of the Church has taught from the beginning all the way through to now, and yet you've got

35:29

BYU professors that are embarrassed by it. We need to understand why they're embarrassed by it, maybe need to encourage their being embarrassed about it, but that doesn't change the fact that BYU professors are not the general authorities of the

35:41

LDS Church. And I think that point may not come through. I guess because the thrust of the book,

35:48

The New Mormon Challenge, was to respond to the scholars, but in fact, not realizing the—as you mentioned in the book, your book,

35:55

Is the Mormon My Brother, the mainstream of Mormonism that's going on. And that kind of brought in my thought, too, and I was listening to a lot of, like,

36:03

Van Hale and Michael, a lot of the lay apologists, saying that even, for example, the prophets, their current living prophets, that, for example, the

36:14

Adam -God theory was just an opinion of Brigham Young versus, you know, what is actual current -day revelation.

36:21

It's a very narrow field. So I'm wondering if you've encountered that, too, that idea of, like, putting off, like, what's an opinion versus what is actual revelation.

36:30

Well, everybody does it, and the folks at BYU have become experts at it because they will pick and choose.

36:41

LDS literature is a huge, massive field.

36:47

I mean, Mormonism started in the modern era, and therefore, from the very earliest period of time, you've got the

36:55

Journal of Discourses, you've got the Documentary History of the Church, you've got stuff that's still being published, still being, you know, printed, that had not been printed before, stuff coming out of the church archives.

37:04

It's huge. It's massive. And so since you have 12 apostles, you have a first presidency, you've got the

37:11

Quorum of the Seventy, you've got all these general authorities running around, and then you've got the General Conference of the

37:17

Church every six months, and all that's written down and published. I mean, no one's ever read all of that stuff, even amongst the

37:23

Mormons. And so given the huge range of opinion expressed, even in the early period of time,

37:32

I mean, look at Brigham Young and Orson Pratt going back and forth and disagreeing with one another and stuff like that.

37:37

It becomes way too easy to create your own, you know, almost out of Plato, create your own

37:47

Mormon orthodoxy type of situation. Sorry to interrupt, but there tends to be that, and I also figured out there's this big rift between, within the

37:56

LDS Church, like Lihonai and the Iron Rods. I'm new to understanding that. Have you ever heard of that either?

38:02

No, you just lost me on that one. What are you referring to? You haven't heard of that? Okay. Well, I was debating with somebody on FAIR, on their

38:09

Facebook, and she mentioned that there's... By the way, the most misnomered organization

38:14

I've ever encountered in my adult life. Anyway, yeah, I won't bring up that debate with Dr.

38:21

Barksdale. Barksdale, yeah, wasn't that fun. He's kind of vanished off that page, but anyway.

38:28

But she was mentioning that there's those who are the Iron Rods that take more the orthodox view of Mormonism, if you can call it that, and those are

38:36

Lihonai, I think it was Lehi's Compass, in other words, that's what it means.

38:42

So those are more like we ask questions, we accept some of it, but we don't... That's that sort of dichotomy.

38:48

I've never heard of that. I've not heard of that either, but that would be a fairly recent development in the sense that it has been during the period of my ministry to Mormons that I have seen this widening,

39:04

I don't want to call it liberalism, but in the sense of allowing for a wider range of opinions.

39:11

And I don't know if that's been forced on the leadership in Salt Lake due to the expansion of Mormonism well beyond the bounds of what can really be meaningfully controlled from Salt Lake City, or if it's the influx, probably a mixture of both, but the influx of converts between, say, 1970 and 2000 that they just didn't really do a great job in catechizing and in teaching historical

39:39

Mormon doctrine to, and hence they're more willing. They brought a lot of their post -modernism with them into the church.

39:46

There's lots of things we can speculate on. But there's no question that in the 1980s when

39:54

I first started talking to Mormons and today, that the 1980s Mormons were much more narrow in the spectrum of theological opinion that they were expressing.

40:04

There's no question about that. That has widened out considerably. I see that here up in Canada. Sorry to cut you off,

40:09

Dr. Craig. Dr. Craig. Dr. Mike. Wow. Are we banned from talking?

40:16

Was I just talking about God using all sorts of different universes to come up with what he wanted to do there or something?

40:23

Was I waxing philosophical? It doesn't sound like it. Yes, I know. I'm like Popeye. But I lost my point.

40:30

I was just saying that given that widening that's there, and I've noticed that even up in Canada, we get a lot of American shows.

40:40

And I don't see nearly as many advertisers using the media as much as up here or wanting to make themselves more distinguished.

40:49

So I see that sort of development that you're talking about within the last 20 years. Well, and if you look at the advertisements they are doing, they are vanilla.

40:57

They are not the stronger, you know, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day

41:02

Saints stuff. Now they've even embraced the term Mormon again. But very, you know, how to be good and kind and nice and, you know, that kind of thing.

41:14

And the Mormon, the missionaries' approach has also, you know, they're not handing you Joseph Smith's first vision, first thing anymore.

41:21

There's definitely been a shift. No one is denying that. The question is, could such a shift signal a fundamental theological revolution within the

41:32

Church in regards to the very nature of God, which is what would be absolutely necessary for the, quote -unquote, worldwide

41:39

Church of God -ing of Mormonism? And I just don't see evidence that that's happening.

41:45

I don't either. I would be pretty radical to go that route. And as you said, the splintering, et cetera, that you talked about before as well.

41:52

Oh, the explosion would be huge. I cannot imagine how many different hundreds of groups would result from the prophet coming out tomorrow and saying, you know what,

42:01

Joseph Smith was wrong about all this exaltation stuff. We're going back to a pre -1838 Joseph Smith.

42:07

I don't know how many different hundreds of groups would result from the massive splitting that would come from that.

42:13

Yeah, is there any chance for any feelers to come up here and debate in Canada? Any talk about that?

42:19

I don't want to get sued and thrown in jail in Canada. We have that thing called the First Amendment down here.

42:25

You guys got nothing. It's pretty bad. The organization I work for, it's a social service organization.

42:32

We were just slapped our hand because we used to have a faith and conduct statement about lifestyle.

42:39

And someone in the organization became, I'm lesbian, and we ended up letting the person go, and we got their hand slapped.

42:48

So it is a pretty bad backlash towards it to the point where we weren't sure if we could keep running this organization.

42:54

Not to scare you. Well, honestly, let's face it, it crosses your mind. That's the whole reason that man was arrested in England a few weeks ago, and all the charges dropped.

43:06

Everybody knew those charges were going to be dropped, but the whole point is to cause silence by intimidation.

43:12

And that's what we do have going on. But no, if Shabir Ali called up tomorrow and said, let's debate,

43:20

I would be more than happy to do so, if we'd be allowed to do so. And as long as I can escape before the lawsuits start,

43:26

I'll probably be okay. You'll probably be okay. I think with something like that, when it comes to anything like, if you brought up your other book,

43:33

The Same -Sex Ponderer, if you were to debate that, that will be, you may not even be getting the auditorium.

43:38

Yeah, you're probably right. And that's sad. That is so, so sad. But on other subjects, yeah,

43:44

I would love to do that, or maybe we can find a venue right on the border, and you all can come down, because we don't protect our borders.

43:51

We even let you people in. We're not too bad. All right.

44:00

Well, thank you, Stephen. Well, thank you, Billy. I just want to let you know quickly that I don't want to monopolize more of your time, but a lot of people up here in Canada have been affected by it.

44:08

I'm encouraged by what you're doing, and I'm excited with your ministry, not only Mormons, but Muslims. So keep it up, and we're rooting for you up here in Canada.

44:17

All right. Well, root for us and pray for us, too. Thank you very much, Stephen. All right. God bless. Bye -bye. Bye now. 877 -753 -3341.

44:25

We blew right through the break there about 15 minutes ago. I don't know if I want to talk to Thomas, because he's in the

44:33

United States. All right. I'll tell you what. Let's talk to Thomas, and let's say

44:40

Thomas, Thomas, can you do a British accent? I don't know,

44:45

Governor, maybe. There you go. All right. You know, Virginia was once an

44:50

English colony, so we'll sort of stretch it a little bit there. All right,

44:56

Thomas, what can we do for you? Yesterday I went to a Mormon ward to hang out with a couple of Mormon missionaries, and I actually got a chance to talk with a couple of them.

45:07

Did you attend the priesthood meeting? Say what? Did you attend the priesthood meeting? No, it was just a

45:14

Monday night basketball. Oh, okay. You said yesterday. I'm sorry. I was thinking Sunday. I apologize. Oh, no, it's all right.

45:20

But I started talking with one of the elders, and so we were engaging him, and one of the things he says was, it's really interesting when

45:26

I knock on people's doors and the Christians will answer, and they'll say, well, I don't like your beliefs because you believe in a different Jesus than we do.

45:34

And he's like, well, come on. That's not true. And I said, well, that actually is kind of true.

45:39

You do believe something else. And so we started engaging, and one of the things that was really interesting was he was claiming that he believes that Jesus was

45:50

God pre -incarnation and when he came to Earth, and he was always God and always will be God.

45:55

And I kind of was like in my mind thinking, that's not what Mormons believe. So I'm just wondering how

46:03

I could demonstrate to him just on a level that that isn't what you believe. I mean, because I'm sure that he knows that, so I don't know what's going on there.

46:12

Well, you can't necessarily say that about an LDS missionary. Let's face it.

46:22

I remember pulling into the parking lot up in Provo, Utah, just outside the

46:29

LDS temple there, which if you've ever seen the Provo, Utah temple, Google it sometime. It looks like a spaceship that got stranded here.

46:35

I mean, it is so 1968. It's not even funny. And we were sort of looking around to see if we could pass out some tracts or something, realized it wasn't going to happen.

46:45

But we saw these two LDS missionaries, so we made a beeline for them. And these guys defined green.

46:53

I mean, they didn't know anything. I mentioned the book of Abraham, and he did not even know it was

46:59

LDS scripture. And he said, go down to that low building down there and ask for President Bishop.

47:05

Well, we went down there, and it was the missionary training center for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day

47:11

Saints. Great story. I'll have to tell it sometime again. I've told it on the air before. But the point is, those elders may not—I mean, even back in the day, they weren't necessarily experts on LDS theology.

47:25

And today, there's even greater reason to maybe extend the benefit of the doubt and to say that's what he may have heard.

47:34

He may actually think that and just probably hasn't read something like Articles of Faith by James Talmadge or Mormon Doctrine or Marvelous Work and Wonder or these other books, which used to be, when you got your call to be a missionary, many of your friends and family would buy for you these sets of LDS books, which would include those books.

47:57

Maybe he was given them, and maybe he hasn't read them. I don't know. But I've certainly run into missionaries who were significantly less than aware of LDS theology.

48:11

As to the concept of Jesus, where do you even begin?

48:18

If you have letters to a Mormon elder, my book on the subject, Letter 12,

48:24

Chapter 12, goes through all the various issues concerning who

48:29

Jesus is, the firstborn of the Father, the fact that his spirit is born at that time.

48:38

But again, you've got to be aware of the terminological differences, because a

48:44

Mormon could say that Jesus has eternally existed if they believe that we all have eternally existed.

48:51

Doctrine and Covenants, I think, up top of my head, it's 9329, says, man was in the beginning with God. So you could affirm that, and Jesus, as one of the spirits of men, would have eternally existed as God did.

49:03

But you specifically said that he had eternally existed as God prior to his coming to this earth, and that's just not possible since he is the first begotten spirit child of Elohim and one of his heavenly wives.

49:18

And so while his intelligence eternally existed, his spirit came into existence at a point in time, and Jesus is problematic for LDS theology, and you will find differences amongst

49:33

Mormons as to how it is that he can be identified as Jehovah God of the

49:38

Old Testament, while at the same time he has not yet gone through everything that a person needs to do to actually become fully exalted as a

49:45

God. In other words, he has not had the opportunity of, well, and some early

49:54

Mormons did think that he married, that he was a polygamist, but to marry, go to the temple, have offspring, and hence receive the fullness of exaltation.

50:03

That's why one Mormon, a very well -connected, well -read Mormon that I was having a conversation with years and years ago as we walked around the

50:12

Temple Square in Salt Lake City, indicated his belief and the belief of many other Mormons that Jesus would have the opportunity during the

50:20

Millennium of marrying, having offspring, going to the Temple, and hence receiving the fullness of exaltation.

50:28

So there are variations on that theme, but the idea of Jesus having eternally been a

50:37

God would fly directly in the face of so much of the teaching that you would find in the

50:46

King Father funeral discourse and in the publications of the Church since then. So, do you have letters to a

50:54

Mormon elder? I do not have that yet. I just recently got Forgotten Trinity, though.

50:59

Okay. Well, letters to a Mormon elder is online. If you go into our LDS section on the website, there's a link to that.

51:06

You could find that chapter online, and then, of course, it would be nice if you actually got the book because it looks nice on your bookshelf.

51:16

But you'd be able to find numerous citations. Looking at this chapter here, it's about 20 pages long, so you're going to have a fair amount of material to go on from there.

51:30

But don't assume that the elder you're talking to has read these things.

51:36

What you might want to do in approaching him, once you get some information that you can run with, is you'd probably want to utilize sources like Articles of Faith by James Talmadge because these are accepted

51:52

Orthodox Mormon commentaries on their own faith that he's going to have access to either in his own library or in the library available to him at his ward or his stake center.

52:06

And so if you're going to have another opportunity of talking to him, what I would do is I would find one of those citations from Letters to a

52:13

Mormon Elder. Like I said, you can find the link on the website. Just found it. I'm sorry? Just found it.

52:19

Okay, good. Go to Chapter 12. Just search for Talmadge.

52:25

You can pull up some of the quotes there. And actually, Chapter 12 is just the beginning of where I start dealing with Jesus because I also deal with other issues in 13 and 14 and so on.

52:33

So search some of those and then ask him to go and look at these things.

52:39

Because if you're asking him to look at these things, then you're giving him the opportunity of learning more about what he believes and putting himself in a position where you can then make the biblical case that I make in the book and make a stronger contrast.

52:58

Because it sounds like right now he doesn't have a real solid knowledge even of his own theology at that point.

53:06

And if there's anything more frustrating, there's almost nothing more frustrating than trying to deal with someone when they're actually confused about their own theology at the same time.

53:16

You want the contrast to be clear, and you want to be able to go to Scriptures and introduce him to the biblical

53:23

Jesus. And it's very difficult when he thinks the biblical Jesus and the Mormon Jesus are the same thing.

53:29

Because he doesn't actually know the Islamic viewpoint. Or the Islamic viewpoint.

53:35

I'm sure he doesn't know that either for that matter. But we don't need to bring that into the situation. Okay, cool.

53:40

All right? All right, thank you very much. Okay, thank you very much, Thomas. Take care. All right, God bless. Bye -bye. Wow, okay.

53:47

Let's make it a Mormon show here real quick. We only have a few minutes, but let's talk with Fred. Hi, Fred.

53:53

Hi, James. How are we doing today? We're doing pretty good. Good. Yeah, I have a question.

53:59

I've been watching some of your videos on Mormonism, and I work on campuses.

54:05

I'm a full -time missions worker. I go out every day and talk to students, you know, about various things. And I have been, since I've watched some of your videos,

54:13

I've been engaging some Mormons, and probably today, too, as I go out today.

54:18

And I did bring up 2 Nephi 25 .23, and what they're saying to me is, well, that's true, but after we sin, after we have fallen, shall we repent and we try again?

54:34

But it's just hard to break that, and I just share with them how when I repent, I also turn away.

54:42

But that doesn't change my eternal destiny with God, but theirs it does, and somehow

54:49

I'm stuck there with that. They just tell me, well, they do repent if they've sinned, and they try harder.

54:54

Yeah, well, I tell you what, those missionaries are going to be carrying around either a triple, a combination, and a

55:04

King James Version of the Bible, or they're going to be carrying what's called a quad. I have a quad in my hand right now, and the quad is the big, huge, thick guy that if you threw it at somebody would probably constitute assault.

55:21

And what I would do is I would direct them to their own

55:26

LDS Bible dictionary and ask them to look up the term grace, and it's on page 720.

55:39

You might want to write that down. I'm sorry, I'm sorry. This one has a different page, so there might be a new...

55:49

Let me double -check this, because it used to be, but maybe this one has changed the page, and I think that they actually have, unfortunately.

56:03

MNOPQR... Yeah, they did change the page here. Look up the word grace, and it's on page 697 of this one.

56:14

And here's what it reads, and I'll do this very quickly. A word that occurs frequently in the New Testament, especially in the writings of Paul.

56:21

The main idea of the word is divine means of help or strength given through the bounteous mercy and love of Jesus Christ.

56:26

It is through the grace of the Lord Jesus, made possible by his atoning sacrifice, that mankind will be raised into mortality, every person receiving his body from the grave in a condition of everlasting life.

56:35

It is likewise through the grace of the Lord that individuals, through faith in the atonement of Jesus Christ and repentance of their sins, receive strength and assistance to do good works that they otherwise would not be able to maintain if left to their own means.

56:49

This grace is an enabling power that allows men and women to lay hold on eternal life and exaltation after they have expended their own best efforts."

57:02

End quote. Now that's exactly what 2 Nephi 25 -23 and Moroni 10 -29 following says.

57:14

And so what you need to emphasize with the Mormon missionary is have you expended your own best effort.

57:23

Grace only meets you when you've put forward your best. But you know and I know they're not putting forward their best because we know we never have either.

57:35

And if grace only kicks in after we do the best we can do, then grace is worthless because none of us ever get there to begin with.

57:44

And so it is that kind of grace. Now just very, very quickly, Fred, the problem that you're up against here when you start talking about grace with Mormons is that the

57:52

Mormons don't have a God big enough to have true grace anyways.

57:58

That's why I think it is necessary to deal with who God is first because the gospel is founded upon His graciousness.

58:08

I mean, if you have a God who's an exalted man from another planet then who himself was dependent upon grace to be exalted, that's totally different than the holy

58:19

God of Scripture who demands perfection and then provides the grace through the

58:25

Lord Jesus Christ to obtain that only through Christ's sacrifice. So that's what's really important to deal with there.

58:32

Okay? Okay, thank you so much, Doug. That was page 698. All righty, thank you, Fred. Thanks for calling.

58:37

Wow, what an eclectic dividing line today. Glenn Beck and then away we went with primarily interesting calls on Mormonism and from all over the world too.

58:48

So wow, that was Sweden and France and Canada.

58:54

Which is the weirdest of those three, we wonder? Well, we'll leave that to the audience to decide.

59:00

Love having folks listening all over the world. Thank you very much for listening. We will continue with our discussion of all sorts of important stuff on Thursday here on The Dividing Line.

59:08

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59:27

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59:34

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59:46

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